Expenditure of time of a routinely performed vascular surgery of a patient with COVID 19- A case report

ABSTRACT

Introduction The worldwide outbreak of COVID 19 is progressing rapidly and represents a challenge for public health systems and hospital facilities. Surgical wards shut down in order to increase the capacity of intensive care units and physicians. Nevertheless, patients with COVID 19 will need surgical procedures in future as well. Methods We report about our first experience, with respect to the expenditure of time, of a patient with a confirmed "SARS-Cov-2"infection in our clinic undergoing an explanation of a port catheter due to a catheter infection. Results Normally, the explanation of a port catheter is a routinely performed surgical procedure. The amount of work is low under usual conditions. Nevertheless, COVID 19 positive patients may be an exception. In this case the duration of the surgical procedure was 125 minutes, whereas the mean duration of the last five procedures was only 50 minutes. Furthermore the time-length of postoperative ward rounds is longer due to the additional necessary personal protection procedures. Conclusion Patients with a SARS-CoV-2 infection will be a challenge for surgical disciplines too as the logistic hygienic support is higher. Therefore surgical capacitiesmay be limited in future.